


Addition, not Substitution

by Dien



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/M, Kink, M/M, Other, Poly, Pre-Series, Voyeurism, college shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 23:09:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dien/pseuds/Dien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So this is kind of a weird story for me in that it didn't start out being about Olivia at all, but an OFC. But I was poking at it and poking at it and I had a moment where I realized the dynamic I had described was considerably more interesting if I anchored it more solidly to canon, gave it weight and long-term consequence. I think the story idea that is created by that is a more complex one that creates more questions, an intriguing blank space between where this ficlet ends and where we know canon took these characters.</p><p>Or maybe I'm a lazy ass who thinks she's brilliant at 5 am. *SHRUG*</p>
    </blockquote>





	Addition, not Substitution

**Author's Note:**

> So this is kind of a weird story for me in that it didn't start out being about Olivia at all, but an OFC. But I was poking at it and poking at it and I had a moment where I realized the dynamic I had described was considerably more interesting if I anchored it more solidly to canon, gave it weight and long-term consequence. I think the story idea that is created by that is a more complex one that creates more questions, an intriguing blank space between where this ficlet ends and where we know canon took these characters.
> 
> Or maybe I'm a lazy ass who thinks she's brilliant at 5 am. *SHRUG*

_You need to get out of the library sometime, come with me, come with me to this party,_ Nathan had said, and his protests had been meaningless and ignored and he still remembers the feel of one large warm hand between his shoulderblades guiding him into the room and into conversation with this girl.

"Harry, this is Olivia. Olivia, Harry-- I thought you two should meet," Nathan says over the noise of the party. He offers a polite, quizzical smile, gaze flicking between the two of them. Nathan smiles, expansive, broad, one hand on each of their shoulders, and leans in to say, "Olivia's a literature major. You like Dickens, right, Harry?"

Right.

There’s a plastic cup of something stronger than beer in his hand— Nathan’s doing again?— and he drinks it barely conscious of the burn as Olivia, Olivia of long blonde hair that he mentally labels as _hippy_ , smiles and talks. It goes much much better than he thinks it should, possibly because they’re talking Dickens and just because he’s never gotten very far with a girl doesn’t mean he doesn’t know his Dickens.

A balcony— cool air a relief after the buzz and closeness of the party— the cup is set down, then toppled over— but whatever it was gives him courage, to take the invitation, lean in and taste Olivia and her wine and and somewhere in the middle of getting her blouse undone he looks over her shoulder and Nathan is there, in the doorway, a cup in his hand just watching, watching, and Olivia murmurs _Hey, don’t stop, tiger,_ so he doesn’t, he winds his fingers into her hair and pulls her closer and keeps his eyes locked with Nathan’s for every minute of unbuttoned jeans and wet fingers and Olivia’s soft moans.

***

After the party he’s not sure if they’re dating, him and Olivia. Should he call her? Should he not? What's the protocol of situations like this? She hadn’t said much, just kissed him, three times, once on the mouth and twice on the cheek almost like little bites, before walking off back into the party while he’d sprawled on the patio furniture with his heart racing and the memory of Nathan’s eyes on him.   
  
Nathan, of course, had been gone.

  
In the end his own shyness dictates his actions; he doesn’t call her. Not that he has her number. He could ask Nathan for it, he’s sure, but he cannot possibly bring himself to mention Olivia to Nathan. To bring that evening up at all.   
  
But the next time Nathan invites him to a party he goes, and Olivia’s there, and she seems pretty happy to pick up where they left off, so to speak. He doesn’t know why she likes him— yes, the books, they do talk books— but she takes his wrist and pulls him off into one of the bedrooms of the house where the party’s being held and they don’t talk books for very long.   
  
He has trouble thinking he’s some sort of massive stud or amazing lover. Proximity to Nathan would make anyone question their own relative attractiveness, and he knows his own inexperience makes the latter unlikely. But Olivia seems to genuinely enjoy what they’re doing, and has  no compunctions about giving him some tips, which he takes very willingly like he does the condom she offers too.  
  
The room’s dark and he’s lying on someone else’s bed, trying not to think about germs or whose it might be. Catching his breath. She’s tracing random patterns on his slender chest.  
  
"Tell me about Nathan," she murmurs.  
  
Oh. That’s why. That’s why, things click with a sudden and novel pang of bitterness. She thinks that he’s the bridge to get to Nathan, the stepping-stone on the way to being Nathan goddamn Ingram’s girlfriend, of _course_.  
  
He pulls away despite himself and is halfway to getting up when her hand on his shoulder stops him.  
  
"Easy there," she says softly. "Relax. I just want to hear you talk about him."  
  
"Why?" he asks breathlessly, heart banging in his ribcage.   
  
Olivia smiles a smile he can barely see in the room’s half-light but it’s the sort of smile that makes him think uncharitably she might do a lot of drugs. “I like hearing about love.”  
  
He doesn’t know what to do with that. He has no _idea_ what to do with that. He lets her draw him back down onto the bed. She pillows her head on his chest, long blond hair tickling his belly, and starts touching his groin again with lazy fingers. His breath flutters helplessly like a wounded sparrows’s.  
  
Love, she says. He doesn’t, no, it’s not like that between them, except he remembers Nathan’s eyes on him and can’t bring himself to say what it is and isn’t like because he doesn’t know anymore.   
  
"He was the first person who talked to me on campus," he manages eventually, stuttering through the words because she’s getting him hard again with those deliberate touches. "He— he— I was studying and he came and said…. hello…"  
  
That’s how he gets his first blowjob. Talking about Nathan goddamn Ingram. She makes soft encouraging noises and does really amazing things with her mouth and her hair feels like silk on his thighs. He’s breathless on a stranger’s bed, one fist jammed into his mouth to keep from crying out when he comes, which Olivia seems to think is funny.   
  
He wonders where in the party Nathan is, who Nathan is talking to, if Nathan would have heard him if he’d yelled.   
  
****  
  
She’s drawn to Nathan. That isn’t surprising. Everyone is. She seems happy to have sex with Harold, but they talk about Nathan more than than they talk about books, on the sporadic not-dates that start to happen.   
  
When she says in a completely-throwaway fashion that Nathan likes having his balls touched his brain locks up. She’s _had_ sex with Nathan. She’s already gotten there. What the hell is she doing with _him_?  
  
He tries to ask her this. Olivia thinks this is funny too. Low and throaty laugh. She’s straddling him on what is, this time, her bed.   
  
"You don’t ever _have_ Nathan,” she says. “It doesn’t work like that. You can have sex with him, it doesn’t change anything. He belongs to too many women.”  
  
"So I’m second best?" he asks, wondering where this well of cynicism in his belly came from. Olivia rolls her eyes.  
  
"You’re a _dope_ ,” she answers him. She shuts him up. It’s pretty easy to do.  
  
****  
  
He thinks several times about trying to tell her that Nathan watched them at the first party. Each time the words die in his throat.  
  
****  
  
"How’re you and Olivia doing?" Nathan asks him one day, very casual. Harold bangs his knee painfully on the library’s table leg when he starts.  
  
"…fine," he answers, cautious, and drops his hand down below the table to rub at his knee.   
  
Nathan’s lips twitch. “Just fine?”  
  
"Are you wanting details?" Harold counters.   
  
"No, no. Just making sure everything’s going okay," Nathan says, unloading his own books onto the table to study. "She's a great girl."  
  
It’s an interesting wording. Almost proprietary. Harold ostensibly returns to his textbook but shoots wary, thoughtful glances up at Nathan every so often.   
  
****  
  
Another party. Another bedroom. Olivia’s fingers hot on his wrist as she leads him away from the others. This time Harold has a theory to test.   
  
He doesn’t close the door all the way behind them.   
  
He’s going down on her, her jeans tugged down around her thighs, face between her warm sweet thighs and nose lost in curls the color of wheat, when he sees the shadow pass in front of the door then stop there. He knows. He knows it’s Nathan. He doesn’t need to look but he does just to confirm, a sideways lance of his eyes to catch the hall’s light on Nathan’s hair.  
  
Harold smiles against Olivia’s intricate ripples of flesh. Not really sure what he was proving, but knowing he has. He presses his tongue against the throbbing pearl of Olivia’s clit, listens to her murmuring encouragement, and counter-point to their own ragged breathing is Nathan’s in the backround, soft, soft, shallow.   
  
****  
  
He wants to do it again, and there’s a problem with that, which is that it doesn’t really seem fair to Olivia, to maneuver her into a situation to be spied on. He is still really hazy on the protocols of dating but it does occur to him she might not _like_ being watched during sex.   
  
"Um," he says to her over cups of cafeteria coffee. It’s the first time they’ve gotten coffee. It's the first time he’s suggested they do.  
  
"Mmm?" She blows on hers, lips pursed into a heart shape. He appreciates the sight of her for a moment. Olivia wears eyeliner but never lipstick, and a different pair of earrings every time he sees her. Her hair is golden but a different golden than Nathan’s, a paler gold, summer wheat, and brown eyes. She’s very pretty, he realizes, an incidental fact he has just now put together, like realizing it’s exactly 100 meters between Keller Hall and the quad, for instance.   
  
"I want— I want to talk to you about something."  
  
"Sound serious," she says with a brow arch.  
  
He doesn’t really like coffee. Why did he suggest coffee? It’s very bitter. Maybe he’s supposed to add more sugar. “Um. Yes. About… Nathan.”  
  
Her second brow arches to join the first. “I’m listening.”  
  
There’s no way to say this. He fusses with the paper edge of the coffee cup. Takes a deep breath, then another, while Olivia’s eyebrows do quizzical wry expectant things.   
  
"Since you said it’s about Nathan, I’ll assume you’re not proposing marriage. So, spit it out, tiger."  
  
Mnh. He pushes his glasses up his nose. “I— I think you should know that— Nathan’s watched us. A few times. Uh. Twice. That I know of.”  
  
He expects shock or outrage or at the very least surprise. Not a slow blink of brown eyes and then an equally slow grin.  
  
"Oh Harold." (She never calls him Harry.) "Of course he is. You didn’t… oh, you _gentleman_.”  
  
He has the feeling he’s just been insulted.  
  
****  
  
"Olivia’s coming over," he tells Nathan.  
  
"Oh yeah?" Nathan says after a half-second’s pause.  
  
"Yeah. So, uh, if you can… you know…" he makes a little shoo gesture with the back of his hand, "for the evening that would be. Great."  
  
"Yeah, sure," says Nathan, not looking up from his math book. Harold knows better.  
  
He spends the half-hour between Nathan’s exit and Olivia’s arrival arranging things just so. Bed. Door. The closet door with its mirror. He wants Nathan to have a good view.   
  
When Nathan’s shadow passes before the deliberately-left-ajar door he offers a tight, edged grin down at Olivia. She answers it with a smirk of her bare lips, digs his fingernails into his ass, and they give Nathan goddamn Ingram a show, alright.   
  
"Next time we should charge him admission," he whispers into her ear.   
  
"Next time," Olivia answers with a groan, "we should invite him to join us."  
  
If if takes two people to hold Nathan Ingram’s interest, so be it.


End file.
